been a mess<\/a>.<\/p>\nSo, naturally, reporters were justifiably curious as to what thoughts Bettman — a former lawyer who served as the NBA’s general counsel and senior vice president before decamping for his role with the NHL in 1993 — had on the matter.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bettman didn’t hold back with his takes on the situation. Here’s what he had to say.<\/p>\n
\nGeneral thoughts on the dispute between Mavs and Stars <\/p>\n
“I am frankly somewhere between amazed and appalled by what I\u2019m seeing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I understand the injunction that was initially issued was vacated today. No surprise, because I think the initial lawsuit is frivolous. I don\u2019t know what\u2019s motivating it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Tom Gaglardi has been a terrific owner for 15 years. He was part of a partnership in running the American Airlines Center, and I guess someone new at the Mavericks has decided — and I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s arrogance or bullying tactics or what have you — that they want to change the state of play. I don\u2019t get it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“If I look at it long-term, it seems to me that the Mavs don\u2019t want to be in the American Airlines Center. They want to be somewhere else, doing something else.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“The Stars are committed to their fans, to Dallas, [the] greater Dallas area. And, so, this doesn\u2019t make sense on a whole host of levels, unless it\u2019s just somebody who thinks they [the Stars] can be pushed around. And that\u2019s not the hockey mentality to be pushed around. It\u2019s not [Stars owner] Tom Gaglardi\u2019s mentality.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“The Stars, from an attendance standpoint, do at least as well as the Mavericks. I think their television ratings are significantly higher. So, I don\u2019t get any of this. And hopefully it gets resolved quickly.”<\/p>\n
\nOn Mavericks allegedly holding Stars arena proceeds in escrow <\/p>\n
“It [still] gets counted in HRR [Hockey-Related Revenue, which determines, among other things, the NHL salary cap]. It\u2019s monies that have been earned.<\/p>\n
“I guess that\u2019s one of the tactics that the Mavericks are using to try to exert pressure on the Stars to do something that wouldn\u2019t be in the Stars\u2019 best interest.<\/p>\n
“Listen, ultimately, this will either get resolved by negotiation or the courts will resolve it. And being a bit of a lapsed lawyer, I like what I see from the Stars\u2019 side.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s not impacting them. That\u2019s not an issue. And, frankly, that\u2019s the least of it under all this. Withholding funds from the Stars is not nice, and maybe the Mavericks think, erroneously, that somehow the Stars are desperate for the money. The Stars can take care of themselves. Tom Gaglardi can take care of the Stars. Not an issue.<\/p>\n
“Tom has operated the Stars in that building for 15 years and this all seems, unless there\u2019s another agenda going on totally unnecessary.”<\/p>\n
\nOn recent trend of NBA teams building basketball-specific arenas <\/p>\n
“I don\u2019t believe that that\u2019s necessarily a good trend, but it seems to be the case that a number of NBA teams think they\u2019d rather go it on their own.<\/p>\n
“What I think is probably the better situation is what they\u2019re doing in Utah. They have figured out from an engineering standpoint how to have two different sets of risers so that the game, or that the arena, can be optimized for both basketball and hockey.<\/p>\n
“But y\u2019know what? If a basketball team wants to go it alone, if the owners of a basketball team decide that they want a setup like they have in a different place, like with a casino or something, it\u2019s not for us to interject. But unless they legalize gambling in Texas, that\u2019s not going to happen.”<\/p>\n
On rumors<\/a> Stars are considering a move from Dallas to suburbs themselves <\/p>\n“I think the Stars are being prudent and looking at what their options are. Because, obviously, based on where we find ourselves today, the Mavericks have made the situation untenable.”\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While in town to announce the Stars’ upcoming game at the Dallas Cowboys’ AT&T Stadium, Gary Bettman addressed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":261535,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-261534","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261534\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/261535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}